OPSEU says it identified the facility through surveillance conducted by private investigators the union had hired, as well as through visits made by union organizers. Global News has confirmed the facility’s location independently through our own visits to the site.

(OPSEU takes the position that people working at the distribution centre ought to be union members under a deal between the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and its union in 2017.)

The OCRC, which operates the customer-facing Ontario Cannabis Store, has said nothing at all about the Oakville distribution facility other than to acknowledge that it exists.

(In B.C., 90 per cent of cannabis buyers told pollsters they were happy with delivery times, as opposed to 60 per cent in Ontario.)

WATCH: Ontario government releases the rules surrounding the cannabis retail lottery system

Later in the year, Ontario delivery times shortened and product selection improved. The unofficial OCS Reddit board, which was at first devoted to the monopoly‘s variousfailings, has now turned mostly to crowdsourcing product reviews.

A look at Ontario’s cannabis distribution centre suggests another explanation for the backlogs: the warehouse, through which all legal pot sold in Ontario must move, may simply have been too small.

Was the rough rollout connected in part to the size of the warehouse? And can the facility cope with shipping to online stores and being a wholesale warehouse next April?

The warehouse’s size turns out to be one of many aspects of legalization in Ontario that the provincial government refuses to discuss.

Ontario’s finance ministry referred the question to the OCRC, and spokesperson Daffyd Roderick emailed a generic response, saying: “Location and details of the OCS distribution centre are undisclosed for security reasons and will not be publicly announced or confirmed.”

A later access-to-information request showed that the OCRC’s refusal to discuss whether the warehouse was big enough is connected to the fact that the agency has tried to keep its address secret (though not very successfully).

“We are not confirming the location of the distribution facility so we did not delve into (this reporter’s) assumptions regarding the facility’s capacity,” Roderick wrote in an internal email.

Ontario’s finance ministry would not answer questions about whether it planned to open more warehouses, whether it planned to move to a bigger one or whether the existing one would be able to meet demand in April.

“When we look at the size of our province and the demand, we should be looking at perhaps expanding warehouse operations, opening more stores, not fewer, as this government is planning to do,” said deputy opposition leader Sara Singh.

“It makes sense as to why we’re seeing such a botched rollout, frankly. How is this one facility supposed to not only be a wholesaler but also distribute this cannabis across the province? It’s unfathomable that it would be sufficient.”

In October, Domain Logistics published two ads at Hamilton’s Mohawk College seeking people to do warehouse-related work at the facility. A municipal development newsletter published by the Town of Oakville last summer said Domain Logistics had leased the warehouse in the second quarter of 2018, which would have been in the last months of Ontario’s Liberal government. Disability law compliance forms on the company’s site also connect it to the warehouse’s address.

The government has refused to say who is running the warehouse or explain how they got the contract.

“We are very concerned about the supply issue so in order to make sure that we don’t have issues in Ontario, we are going to open our retail stores in phases,” provincial Finance Minister Vic Fedeli told Global News at the time.

Charles Sousa, finance minister at the time the warehouse contract was awarded, declined an interview request, as did acting Ontario Liberal leader John Fraser.